“[Some mothers] hold off reporting domestic violence [due to fear of child protective services]. In some states it is considered neglect to permit a child to witness adults fight in the home. When a mothers calls the police to report she has been beaten, she may be confessing to child neglect. ‘When I called 911, I was bleeding so badly I knew I needed medical attention,’ Sharwline Nicholson told a New York Times reporter. ‘I didn’t know I’d end up down that road, that calling for help would escalate and I’d end up losing my kids.’
In July 2001, federal judge Jack Weinstein heard testimony in a class action lawsuit brought by twenty battered women who allege that New York City child welfare officials violated their rights by taking custody of their children. April Rodriguez told the judge that ACS put her three children, ages seven, three, and one, in foster care when she called the police to report abuse by the father of two of the children. The agency refused to return them until Rodriguez moved into the city’s shelter system, forcing her to lose her job at a Manhattan video store. Although the children spent only a week in foster care, Rodriguez testified that ‘they weren’t the same children.’ ‘My baby’s shirt was filthy and her diaper was disgusting,’ she said. ‘My son, his face was bruised and bloody, and he had pus coming from his lips.’
A Michigan court even terminated a battered woman’s parental rights based on a psychologist’s prediction that the woman was at risk of entering into a relationship with another abusive man. Some women decide to handle the situation themselves rather than risk intervention by child protective services.”
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Dorothy Roberts, Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare (via thecurvature)
I lost my child this way.
(via notyourkinddear)
Horrifying. Women are treated as incubators before they give birth, and after they give birth, their rights and relationships with their children are stripped away.
(via nom-chompsky)
(via monsterlights)
